Nollywood filmmaker Chinney Love who recently lost her mother has expressed frustration, anger and exhaustion in organising burials in Igboland …..
She posted
''I am sick, frustrated, angry, tired and just generally fed up!
Why do people just try to make things hard for you during burial a very vulnerable time of your life when you are still grieving?
It’s like they wait for burial to wanna flex muscle and power… it’s exhausting and draining..
Very soon people would stop taking their parents body to the village because what is all this stress…
I honestly can’t wait for all this phase to be over!''
Absolutely true in Igbo land. Dunno if to call it wickedness. When someone is grieving thats when they choose to flex all their power. Pay this, pay that bring this n that. Na we dey kuku kill ourselves.
ReplyDeleteHahaha, it's the culture na, umunna and umuada must collect their rites, even the youths are not excluded, to dig ground nko, you must pay, even to shoot the gun when the body is being brought for burial, ego must drop.
DeletePele dear, take heart it's the culture.
Bv God's Favor
Culture shouldnt be torture, My dear. I pray all those nonsense die with time.
DeleteWhat I don't understand is that if someone is not a family member of the deceased and I mean spouse and children before the deceased parents and siblings. What is the business of strangers in the matters of someone else's burial they are not related to. I just don't understand how strangers will be calling the shots over someone else's burial. My siblings and I buried both my parents the way we wanted and where I come from we are the only ones that matter and call the shots- no one else.
ReplyDeleteIn Igbo land we are all connected to kins and lineage so it's not just about the immediate family.
DeleteShe didn’t lie at all! Almost all our traditions were made to suffocate us!
ReplyDeleteWedding, problem! Burial problem!
This is the type of tradition they expect us to love above the western ones we’ve adopted oh!
Believe me, burial is the absolute worst!!!
DeleteThey do this mostly to people that don't always return home, they will bill you eh and hardly show up for the burial, them no send!!!
ReplyDeleteNa tradition o, burial is a expensive unless you want to bury your folks like chicken.
You will pay and pay, during my grandmother's burial, I didn't go cuz I was indisposed but I and my children were billed, I payed and faced front.
Gifty I don't agree with your first line. It's not about who frequently comes home to them, it's all about their pockets and stomachs. They use burial to enrich themselves forgetting that onwu aso ngaoye.
DeleteI perfectly understood what she wrote and honestly this has to stop!!
ReplyDeleteLike, these people don't care about the grieving family all they want is food, meat and drinks. I still haven't recovered from my late brother's burial.
Pele dear..e dey pain..
ReplyDeleteWhat is their business with people that don't always return home?. Why are they poking nose and bothered about people that don't always return home. Don't they have their own families that they will be making list of people that don't always return home. How does that concern them.
ReplyDelete@Gifty, I disagree. This isn’t limited to people who rarely come home; it often falls on families assumed to be financially stable, without any regard for the fact that they simply live within their means.
ReplyDeleteMy cousin and I each buried a parent recently. The costs were heavy. What made it harder was the attitude from people who had no sense of the sacrifices immediate family members made to keep things going before the loss.
At times, even the church - depending on the priest - adds to it. I’ve yet to see a case where the deceased wasn’t said to owe something, even when they had met their religious obligations. It raises questions about the sincerity of the church in such situations.
I haven’t fully recovered, and my cousin is still dealing with his own strain - as a man, society has no patience waiting for things to turn around.
It’s serious. You start to wonder why that same energy wasn’t directed at fully supporting the person while they were alive - rather than showing up only with demands at their demise.